


for reasons unknown

by prequels



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prequels/pseuds/prequels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He sat in front of the weirwood until the sun shone through the highest red leaves. He tried to wipe away its bloody tears a few times, but he only ended up covered in sticky sap, and still the tree cried. He wished he could pray to the god inside of it, but he knew not its name nor his own prayers."</p>
            </blockquote>





	for reasons unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [craple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/craple/gifts).



> based on the song by the killers.  
> 

"Mhysa," she says, finality etched into her voice in a way he'd never heard it before. "They used to call me Mhysa."

He smiled, even though there was no occasion to. "I know."

She empties her goblet down her throat. He wonders when she began to drink. After they landed, but before the last secession. Probably around the time of the burning. He looked around the ruined keep, the scorched walls, the roofless hall. Did it kill her to be in a place destroyed? They'd left here as children, returned to see it in its splendor for only a moment before they were forced to turn it to ashes. It was that or the whole city, she'd told him, but she still held him as he cried atop Viserion. 

* * *

 

They made the journey to Winterfell when the time came. It was nice, for Aegon, to see a castle hollow and dead like his, though this one was on the mend. They went by the Kingsroad. They'd quickly learned that a fiery beast is more threatening than welcoming to others. The Lord was gracious, crippled, but a perfect host nonetheless. Aegon wondered if he'd ever host people in the Red Keep. He supposed not.

It was spring, but the chill of the North still made its way through Aegon's bones. They arrived after the day's last meal, and requested to be shown straight to their rooms. Dany kept the dragons in her chamber as guards -- the last time the Starks had been visited in Winterfell had been the start of a war. She'd offered one to Aegon, but he'd declined. He always did. He knew she saw the fear in his eyes every time he caught sight of the fearsome Rhaegal, the quick Viserion, the dreadful Drogon. Fire cannot kill a dragon, she used to remind him. She doesn't anymore. He wonders what makes Daenerys a dragon and himself a man.

* * *

He'd noticed that Lord Stark was alone when he'd greeted them. "I thought there was a sister and a brother," he'd said to Daenerys as the parted for the night.

She gave him a suspicious look. "They were there. They stood atop the ruined tower, looking down on us. You didn't see them?"

Aegon paused for a moment, trying to remember. "No," he said finally, walking away from her. "I suppose not."

* * *

 

He'd woken at dawn to explore. King's Landing had been foreign to him, though he'd been told for as long as he could remember it was his rightful home. He wondered if that was how the Stark siblings had felt at one point -- what was once their home had been turned to rubble, and what was once their world had gone spiraling out of control.

He'd found the wolf, big and black and menacing, in the Godswood. It jumped on him, but Aegon froze, willing himself not to startle. A wolf can not kill a dragon, he thought, but it was Daenerys' voice, not his own. _We are only dragons in our minds, and this is a real wolf,_ he wanted to scream back at her. _When you show me your talons, when you breathe fire, I'll believe you._ But the wolf wanted only to play.

He sat in front of the weirwood until the sun shone through the highest red leaves. He tried to wipe away its bloody tears a few times, but he only ended up covered in sticky sap, and still the tree cried. He wished he could pray to the god inside of it, but he knew not its name nor his own prayers.

* * *

 

"Where are your siblings?" It's their midday meal, and they've yet to see the younger Starks. Aegon kept his eyes trained on the dark hair, the light eyes, the furrowed brow of the younger man, he could feel the fire in Daenerys' glare from beside him. "Have tact," he heard her saying from the past, an echo back to when they first returned to Westeros. They'd been visited by his mother's family, the Martells. They'd wanted to arrange a betrothal with a beautiful, sultry woman. Daenerys had encouraged it.

"She's beautiful," Dany had counseled.

"She's fiery," Aegon had countered.

"Fire cannot kill a dragon," she'd told him.

"No," he'd agreed, "But it can burn."

When he had simply refused their offer without an explanation, the Dornishmen had left disgruntled. "Have tact," she'd said. "It wouldn't do to upset our most probable allies."

"Have tact," he hears her say now, though her lips don't move. "Don't offend the Lord." He ignores her critique, trains his eyes back on the Stark, who clears his throat.

"Nowadays they spend most of their time in the crypts, I'm afraid."

 _"Have tact!"_ Dany's eyes seem to scream. _"Let it drop!"_

He does.

* * *

But when Dany's gone off quickly, hearing Rhaegal's screech from outside, Aegon holds the younger man back before he can be taken out of his chair. "Might I take a visit to the crypts?"

"Of course, your grace," he says with ease. A servant takes him past doors and down warmed but chilling halls, footsteps threatening to echo but not quite ever doing so. The servant leaves him at the top of a scuffled flight of stars. He sees torches along the walls at the bottom. It looks untouched, ancient, built by the First Men, and certainly not destroyed along with the rest of Winterfell. He attempts to gouge its age in comparison to the weirwood he took solace in hours ago. He shivers. Aegon selfishly wishes the crippled lord was able to take him down the the dank crypts instead, if not for comfort, than at least for another living breath.

The wolf he'd seen earlier prowls at the bottom of the steps and catches sight of him. He wags his tail and growls. The actions together seem contradictory, but instead of growing wary Aegon makes his way quickly down. It is more brightly lit than he'd have imagined, torches casting pools of orange light before the jump back into darkness. He catches faces in the stone. He wonders if the spirits of the Kings in the North can hear him, can see him. Then, foolishly, he wonders if a dragon from the air could turn this place to ruin. He supposes not. It's too deep for fire to destroy. Burn, maybe, but not obliterate.

The girl sat in the lap of a man, heavily built with her long face and the long faces of the rest of the cold-eyed dead lining the wall. She sharpened a dagger as if she were doing needlework, her hand lithe and efficient, going in crisscrossing patterns to achieve the desired effect. Her eyes were lowered, her work in her lap. The remains of old torches sat at her feet, the looming Stark face so eerily similar to her own sitting above her. She sunk into the man and was content with this, as if she were the soul and he were the body encompassing her. Ned Stark, he realized with a flash of fear -- he shouldn't be in here, shouldn't intrude on the resting place of the wolves. He didn't leave.

The boy scratched at the stone arm of a man, ancient and hard, sitting at its foot instead of on its knees. The area he scrubbed at already was faded, showing signs of decay. He wonders how often the boy comes in here to claw at that one wrist. He could see the wolf helping from time to time. The boy's eyes were wide with trepidation, though simultaneously bored, making him appear much younger than his actual age. It was only then that Aegon realize the girl was not a girl -- she was only a few years younger than he -- but a woman, and the boy was not a boy, but a man grown. Figures shrunken into themselves to produce the façade of a hollow child.

"What are the names of your gods?" He asks without warning. The girl startles, but the boy does not. Neither answer. "The Old Gods. The ones in the trees, and the Children of the Forest. What should I call them in my prayers."

The boy raised his eyebrows questioningly, but the girl answered. "Do you think I've ever met the Children of the Forest?"

Feeling alienated, Aegon hunched his shoulders. "No. They died centuries ago."

"They were _killed_ centuries ago," corrects the boy, rubbing painfully hard on his wolf's neck.

Aegon could think of only one reply. "So were you."

* * *

Aegon watches the boy's eyes roll into the back of his head, watched the wolf leap out of the room, blood and hunger in its eyes. His body lies against the same statue he'd so adamantly vandalized. The girl sighs, half longing to join him and half scared of where he's off to.

"He's more wolf than he is himself since I returned," she tells him. It's the first time he's heard her voice light, conversational, and it feels fake and out of place.

"What's the wolf's name?" he asks, wondering if it too, like their gods, was a nameless entity.

"Shaggydog," she tells him with a reminiscent smile that doesn't fit her face. "Though I've begun to call him Rickon." _Rickon,_ Aegon thinks, _and Arya_. But somehow his mind can't wrap around these words, can't fathom calling them anything but the boy and the girl. She continues to speak. "He spends more and more time in his fur than his skin. Over half the day, now. Hunger is man's worst affliction."

"No," Aegon tells her, lying down in the floor beside the boy's body. "Loneliness is man's worst affliction."

"To each his own," she tells him, raising her eyes to catch the light. They are a stormy grey, and he is reminded of horizons he has flown through, castles he has stayed in, all to arrive here. All the same unsatisfactory color. He sees it in her eyes too, a restlessness but also the feeling of never wanting to move. _Arya_. He replays the sound in his mind and wonders when people became words, and words people.

* * *

The five of them sup together that night, with Bran's small household guard down at the end long oak table, the dragons feasting right outside the window, fighting over boars' legs. The queen doesn't have a household guard, not yet. They brought with them only servants. He sits between _Rickon_ and _Arya_. Arya eats like a wolf. Rickon doesn't eat at all. Aegon sees wet blood around Shaggydog's snout, and figures Rickon ate already. Daenerys broaches conversation with Arya a few times, but the younger girl is having none of it. Bran had told her his sister would be interested in Daenerys' travels -- her journey through the Free Cities, her marriage into Khal Drogo's khalasar, her tales of war. But Arya told her that war was of no interest to her, that she had no intent to marry, and that she knew enough of the Free Cities. Bran distracted Daenerys with stories of their brave mother, their honest mother, their strong siblings. Arya and Rickon, silently pretending not to listen to their brother, looked ill. When Shaggydog began to growl at the dragons outside, Rickon took it as an excuse to escort him back down to the crypts. It was not long after that Aegon asked to be taken to the godswood.

Dany's eyes are wide with surprise, about to object, but she never got the chance. "They aren't your gods," Arya tells him, anger in her voice but still eyeing him curiously.

"According to whom?" he asks.

They arrive in minutes. He sits facing the deathly tree, cross legged, keeping himself from brushing his hands over its face. She sits against its side, head lolling to the side, eyes wide. When she repositions herself to look at him, her tunic gets caught on the tree's sap. She is oblivious to it, he notices. She stares at him for a long moment, and then crawls to sit next to him, dragging her knees in the dirt, facing the heart tree. She instructs him to close his eyes, but doesn't do so herself. He hears to the sounds of night animals, the soft, carrying sounds of a castle winding down, her own fidgeting beside him. He listens for a wolf's howl, but it never comes.

* * *

 After hours, Aegon's nearly fallen asleep twice. He's almost positive Arya's deep breathing, absence of sound, head on his shoulder means she's been asleep since she sat down. But she hasn't, he knows somewhere in the back of his mind. She's just waiting.

"What do you pray for?" she asks then, picking up a fallen blood-colored leaf and picking it apart, ripping it from the middle outward. She says it dejectedly, as if the answer has already displeased her. He searches his mind for an appropriate answer, for long enough that she sits up, removing her head from his shoulder, to study his face. He keeps his eyes on the morose reflection of himself carved into the tree, his past slipping through his eyes in bloody tears. He looks for answers in the heavy bark, expecting to find questions, but instead only discovers the murky in between. At last, he lets his answer escape.

"I don't."

* * *

 A fortnight later, she climbs in through his window, perches herself at the foot of his bed. He's been staring up at the ceiling for quite some time, his candle having burned dangerously low. "You want to leave," she tells him. He knows his nod is superfluous, but he gives it to her anyway. He'd positioned himself so she'd overhear his nighttime conversation with his aunt, asking to make an early exit without her company. He would take Viserion. She had granted his wish. Arya tells him she's to go with him, as he suspected she would. "I've already informed Bran and Rickon," she says. "We're to come back in a moon's turn to marry in the godswood."

"We'll be riding Viserion," he tells her, as she lifts his blankets and crawls beneath. The room is warmer now that she is so close. Their arms and legs, fingers and toes intertwine, but somehow they remain separated, their own beings. A devilish smirk arrives on her face at the thought of riding a dragon, and it gives him goosebumps. The face is one he's never seen, yet it seems like the fiendish Arya he'd never met was the same one as the Arya he'd fallen so quickly for.

For a moment, the image of her face, her fierce scowl, her rigid muscles sculpted in stone swims before his eyes, a thousand years from now -- buried beneath the cold castle, children in the bodies of murderers sitting anther feet, sharpening their blades, scratching the stone of her arm. He shakes his head and gives her a grin. He wonders if she'll miss the crypts.

He wonders if the crypts will miss her.


End file.
